


Beyond The End

by Vana



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:31:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1691693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vana/pseuds/Vana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title taken from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztAcUpRbJso&feature=kp">a beautiful Jimmy Buffett song</a>.</p></blockquote>





	Beyond The End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ariel2me](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariel2me/gifts).



Idemay Saan played cyvasse for hours with Stannis Seaworth: the oldest living Seaworth against the seventh of Salladhor’s brides, pregnant at fifteen with the pirate’s child. The two, Idemay and Stanny, were born two days apart. Marya had discovered this at Salla and Idemay’s wedding. She had felt so often for her dead husband’s hand — next to her under the table, by her side as the vows were exchanged — that she felt the air begin to solidify inside her fingers, the emptiness take a shape. She would will Davos into being so he could see his best friend wed — again — and so he could see his sons happy. Again. The music was loud and raucous and when Salla pulled her into a dance while Idemay rested her feet, Marya could see the tears in his black eyes and answered them with her own.

—

Marya stood at the water’s edge every day when she lived at Cape Wrath, watching the tide run out, with her hand shading her eyes. Hour after hour, she watched. Even one finger would be enough, one piece of her husband left to her from the rightful king, Stannis Baratheon.

But no, he had taken it all: Dale, Allard, Matthos, Maric, Devan, and finally Davos. She had received the letter from White Harbor and had her lady’s maid read it aloud to her. “A better King’s Hand than a husband.” Lia had looked shocked when she read it aloud, but Marya only snorted back a laugh.

“He thought I didn’t know,” she said, wonderingly. “Every man alive lies with other women when they’re away from home.”

“But my lady … you were _married_.” 

“Am still married, Lia, until I die. And Davos? He could lie astraddle the Queen Cersei and all her ladies in waiting, and I would know his heart was still with me.”

“My lady, Lord Davos sounded remorseful in the letter.”

“He thought I demanded as much of his honor as his King Stannis, that’s all. Hand me the letter,” and Marya folded it into her bosom. She had buried her husband long before she heard him say he was to be killed. Now she just waited for a remnant.

—

When there was no word for more months, and Salladhor arrived with his golden-gilded ship, she knew it was time to go. Cape Wrath was home to her remaining children, but not as much to her as the shanty she and Davos had shared when they first wed, when they dreamed of sons and daughters and dancing and song, before Davos had ever heard of Storm’s End and decided to stake his future on some smuggled onions. So while Stanny stood stoic on the ship’s deck and Steff loitered behind to kiss all the walls of the last castle he would know, Marya looked east already, to the place they would make their new home.

Lys was fair and bright and the women sang and the men sang louder, and at night, they all sang from the windows of the pleasure-houses. Salladhor Saan was in his element here, with his new wife and his children and his jewels and olives. Marya started over, though she would take no suitors.

“You need the help, my lady,” Sal would say. “Your boys will not be boys forever. You will be a woman alone.”

“My boys will never leave me,” Marya replied, with a flash of anger any rarely saw.

“If they should fall in love? Wish to marry and bear children and carry on your husband’s name? You will not let them leave your house?”

“No,” said Marya, with finality in her voice. “Their brides and their children will live with me. Salla, I once lived in a shack with rats in the walls and a corner to bury our waste in. But it was the most beautiful home, because I shared it with six others. My family. My two sons will bring home their wives, and their wives will bear their children at home, and their children’s children. And when I stop hearing the footsteps of my dead boys, the voice of my husband … then perhaps I will live alone again.”

—

“I am so sorry,” Marya read, and she could trace the words with her wet finger and see the ink smear and it was almost as if she was touching his fingertip, the whorl of her finger fitting with the sea-chapped skin of his, the curtain between living and dead parted through a blur of black ink, now faded with the years. Two women yelled in the bedchamber upstairs, the singing of birth and pain. Marya was resting her weary feet while a neighbor washed rags and then she would return again. Her son’s wife was birthing her first grandchild and Idemay Saan, a mother of three, was holding up the girl’s shaking knees and screaming right along with her with every push. “I can’t,” shrieked Betony Seaworth, small of hip and voice, large of heart. “I _can’t_.” 

“You can,” Idemay insisted, voice booming. “You will!”

Marya knew she would be needed in another moment, and she could not miss the crowning of the child. She knew it would be a little girl; the way Betony carried low and small, the way her sickness had lasted all nine moons instead of just three, the way Stanny knelt at the curved belly and called it “my darling.” The little girl was coming, and the house shook with Betony’s screams, and Idemay roared orders. Stannis Seaworth, her eldest son, sat in Salladhor’s house with Steff and pretended to play cyvasse. Marya would have to be grandfather and grandmother both to this little girl who had never known the Stormlands.

For now, she caressed the parchment, worn and soft. Then she sighed, feeling her years, and put the letter away.

—

Stanny’s daughter was three years old. Marya combed the girl’s brown curls out every morning and then they would have games until Betony called that breakfast was ready, and then Marya and the women would go out to the market. It became harder for Marya to remember her life before Lys, before these sun-kissed islands, before the baby. Stanny sometimes reminded her so much of Dale that it was hard to remember not to call him the lost son's name. He was content to stay at home, doting on Betony and lavishing his attentions on his daughter. Steffon, though, had the sea in his blood like his father, and a devilish humor that Marya couldn’t trace.

“He’s my son in truth,” Salladhor laughed, his beard growing grey but as handsome and showy as ever. “Look at him — off to see another girl even now.”

Salla sometimes followed, still able to catch the eye of any woman in the city. Marya, in her straightforward way, once asked Idemay about it. 

“I know he lies with other women,” said the Lyseni, without malice, for lovemaking was the only god her people knew. Then Marya heard the voice of another woman, newly widowed, long ago. “But I know his heart is with me.” 

Nonetheless, Idemay looked worried more each day when Salladhor took to the seas and did not return for many months. She and her children nearly lived at Marya’s home and they were all there on a purple-lit evening when Salla burst into the door, looking years younger, beaming from ear to ear. 

“You audacious pirate,” Idemay shouted at him, all the angrier for her relief. “Where in the name of the goddess have you been? You sent no word, no message! You could have been dead in the Shivering Sea for all the good you’ve done me!”

“My wife,” Salla said, with an expansive shrug, to someone who was coming in behind him and waited in the shadows of the doorway. Marya stood, turning toward the stove, thinking of dinner for two more. There would be time for hospitality later, but she would let the lovers have their reunion and keep the children out from underfoot.

“Stanny,” she said, “go and fetch another duck — two ducks. Salla, how many have you brought with you? We’ll have dinner ready in a moment.”

“Just one.” But the voice was not Salladhor’s.

Marya turned toward it. His hair had grown long and grey, his beard unkempt. The wrinkles around his eyes hid them so deeply she almost couldn’t see their warm brown. 

“Marya,” he said, very gently.

Then she was in his arms, sobbing.

—

Davos knelt on the hard floor. His knees felt it, but he didn’t mind. The little girl hid behind her mother’s skirts, and her father — a man grown, a man who was the very likeness of the eldest son they had lost — tried unsuccessfully to coax her out. There had been too many tears, too much shouting, and the small child was afraid. 

“Do you like stories?” he said. He had years of stories to tell them all, one by one. The fat man and the stew, the beasts and the beast-men, the burnt woods and castle. The wall of ice that was as high as the sky, the fire that reached to the heavens to match it. The beautiful sad stone princess and her toy boats, and the boy she loved, now a lost man wandering the world, with only ashes to remember her by.

The child peeked from behind the skirt.

“I like … some stories,” she said. 

“I will tell you a story if you come here and shake my hand,” said Davos.

Cautiously, she emerged. She was beautiful, dark like her mother, and with the eyes of her father — his eyes, he realized with a start. She held out her hand, all childlike seriousness. Davos took it in both of his and did not let go.

“Tell me your name, sweet heart,” he said.

“My name is Mareya Seaworth.” She seemed to be sizing him up, looking at him with the eyes of generations before her. The nightmares that haunted even his days had no power in the face of her innocence, of all the life she held in her little body. “What is yours?”

“Davos,” he said. “But you shall call me Grandpapa.”

—

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from [a beautiful Jimmy Buffett song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztAcUpRbJso&feature=kp).


End file.
